Pharoanic Egypt was surely one of the most sophisticated of civilisations. A plentiful supply of food from around the Nile, freedom from foreign domination because of its isolation, and a remarkable combination of skills (from hieroglyphs to pyramids) ensured the country's continuity throughout the three millennia before the Christian era. The price was an intensely conservative society: medical practice, for example, scarcely changed until the Persians conquered the country in 525 BC.

The medical evidence, as John Nunn recounts in Ancient Egyptian Medicine, comes from a dozen papyri, thousands of …